REMCELL 2014 - The First International Workshop on Relay Multi-hop Communications in 5G Cellular Networks (REMCELL 2014)

Next-generation (5G) cellular communications will represent a major paradigm change in this type of wireless networks, where the main goal is to improve performance by combining the advantages of the traditional centralized (user to base-station) schemes and the new D2D (device-to-device) connectivity techniques. Challenges are numerous and include, among the most important aspects, resource allocation under mobility, intracell/intercell interference management, and relay selection and maintenance. Due to the necessary coexistence of D2D and centralized connectivity in 5G, it is crucial to pay close consideration to multi-hop relaying in next-generation cellular networks, which will serve to guarantee larger signal coverage areas to the users, enhancing QoS by increasing the spectrum efficiency. However, many technical barriers mainly related to the distributed nature of the network have to be tackled first in order to ensure the technical viability of this new approach.